I must apologize for not getting a post up first thing Monday morning.  I am sorry.  To be honest, I didn’t know exactly what to write.  Have you ever had so much going through your heart and or head that you when you tried to sort it all out it all came out in one big gobbledy gook of a mess?  Or when you tried to write a post for your class’ blog the faucet that is your brain just dries up?  O.k. so maybe that was me.  In some ways this is a problem because I have a responsibilty to fulfill, but that is not my biggest problem.  Mostly because I consider this a privilege, not just a responsibility.  Really the reason this is a problem is because I am pretty sure I have been avoiding dealing with some things in my spiritual life lately.  Am I making sense yet?  Bear with me.

The last three services of this revival week have been excellent.  I hope you did not miss them.  God has been working in lives.  There have been people who have seen their need for Christ and come to accept Him as Savior!  Praise God!  There have been Christians who have confessed sin.  I am one of them.  There have been Christians who have decided to take the next step in their walk with the Lord.  I am one of them.  Where are you?  What is the next step God is prompting you to take?  I told the Lord tonight I had sinned against Him.  I had stopped trying.  I had stopped hoping in Him.  I had stopped looking to Him for my daily sustenance.  I told Him I knew I had turned away from Him to avoid dealing with more painful or difficult situations in my life.  It was all just too much!  God, I can’t handle anymore! 

My life has had some significant health challenges over the last two years.  There have been some very high spiritual peaks for me, but lately it has been a dark valley.  It has been a desert of discouragement, and the saddest part is it is most of my own making.  So, I made a choice.  I shut down.  Now, there have been some good days.  I have tried to share with you some of those in my past posts, but tonight after Mr. Pettit’s sermon, I had to admit “out loud” what I have known in my heart for sometime now.  I knelt before the Lord and confessed my self-reliance.  I confessed that I had stopped working on my spiritual life.  Praise God for forgiveness.  O.k., stick with me, the faucet is starting to flow a bit more. 

Where did all this realization come from?  It has been building through lots of occurrences,  but it culminated tonight.  Let me share with you just a few points from the sermon tonight.  I pray it will be speak to you as it did to many others tonight.  First we go to Romans 7, “Paul’s Autobiography” as Mr. Pettit titled it.  Starting in verses 14 & 15 we see Paul say, “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.  I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  Does this mean Paul is unsaved when he wrote this?  Backslidden?  A carnal Christian?  No.  Look at what he says in v.22, “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;”.  A sinner does not delight in God’s law.  A backslidden Christian does not care what God’s law is.  Paul is a mature Christian when he penned this passage.  The more spiritual you become, the closer to God you grow, the more you see your sinfulness.  Have you experienced that?  I know I have.  You come to a point where you cannot ignore what you are on the inside and you can no longer be indifferent.

So, you do what you don’t want to do, and you don’t do what you want to do.  Now what?  Paul says this is classic in the life of a Christian.  He is sharing, in Romans 7:14-25, with us two unchanging principles he has observed in the life of a Christian and a plan to deal with them.  Put very simply, good and evil.  Good is delighting in God and His Word.  Evil is the law of sin which wages wars within us.  There is a civil war in each of us.  So what is Paul’s conclusion about this situation?  Look in v. 24a, “O wretched man that I am!…” (KJV)  This is the cry of a man who recognizes the truth of the law of sin which operates within him,  within each of us.  He knows he cannot change by self-effort.  “…who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (v. 24b/KJV)

Who indeed?  Hopefully this is an obvious answer to each of us who call Christ our Savior.  Paul points us to Christ.  “Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!…” (v. 25)  Christ not only died on the cross to save us from the penalty of sin, separation from God for eternity, but He also conquered the power of sin over us in our life!  Have you ever thought of this in those terms?  I am not sure I had until tonight.  That was a comfort to me.  How many times have you tried to change a habit or a sinful pattern in your life?  It works for about two days, huh?  This is because we are depending upon our own power to bring about the change.  We will never succeed this way.  We don’t have the power to save ourselves from sin, what makes us think we have what it takes to conquer something as sinister as sin?  Real, lasting, true change does not come until I am desperate to change and I turn my heart to God, cry out for His forgiveness and beg Him to change me.  I must ask Him continually for the strength to carry out the change.  But beyond Paul’s desperation to change this pattern in His life, he was desperate to avoid the result if he did not!  In the end of v. 24 in the KJV he uses the terminology “…this body of death.”  Mr. Pettit gave us some insight into what this meant in Paul’s day.  (Beware, this is graphically icky, but it does show what sin really does to a person.)  The Romans were quite barbaric in some of their punishments for crimes.  If you have ever read the entire account of the crucifixion, or seen the images portraying it in The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson, you know what torment and torture those people went through.  Well, if a man murdered someone, the Romans would bind the murderer to his victim.  Face to face, chest to chest, leg to leg.  Then they would throw them into the heat of the Mediterranean desert heat.  As the victim’s body would start to decompose in the heat, the decomposition would begin to eat into the body of the murderer.  I don’t share this with you for shock value, but to get across a point of how dangerous uncontrolled, unconfessed, continual sin is in a person’s life.  It is a powerful enemy.  We need a more powerful Ally in our battle against it.

So, since these verses are the end of Chapter 7, does that mean Paul just leaves us hanging?  NO!  He leaves us with a battle plan.  But first he makes it clear to us that total deliverance from this battle will not happen until we see Christ.  Don’t be discouraged.  God is the God of hope!  He never leaves us without the weapons to fight.  Go to Chapter 8.  “Therefore is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death, For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.” (vs. 1-4)  So here is our weapon!  If the law of sin is our enemy, the law of the Spirit is our weapon, our shield, our ammunition.  We do not have to be held captive by the law of sin!  If we operate under the power of the Holy Spirit, we will have what we need to effectively fight temptation and sinful habits. 

So let me conclude with the three points Mr. Pettit summed up this plan with.

1.  8:14 – You must come to the place where you want/desire His help.  You must choose to obey God.  “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” (KJV)

2.  8:5 – You have to change your thinking/feelings/disposition/attitude.  This comes through the Spirit and the Spirit works through the Word of God.  Therefore we must consistently, continually be in Scripture, studying, memorizing and applying. (Our inconsistencies in the Christian life come mostly during our day-to-day where we are not thinking Biblically.)  We must literally change our brain processes!  “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what he Spirit desires.”

3.  8:13 – “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die:  but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.”  To mortify means to put to death, and deeds of the body means our choices.  So we must put to death our sinful choices.  We must make choices to avoid things we know will cause us temptation.  People, places, events, etc.

So to sum up, in short, we do not have to be slaves to the law of sin!  We must depend upon the power offered us by the Holy Spirit, we must be in His Word to learn His ways, and we must daily ask Him to change us.  We do not have to be prisoners of war to the tyrranical dictator of sin!  God gives us the tools, He gives us the strength, He gives us the desire and He will give you the victory!

Hope to see you during the rest of the services this week!! It is worth making the time!  I hope the Lord will use this in your heart as He did in mine.  Have a great week!

Marissa 

(Unless otherwise noted, Scripture verses were quoted from the NIV.)